White Is for Witching (Oyeyemi) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
[Oyeyemi] knows that ghost stories aren't just for kids. And White Is for Witching turns out to be a delightfully unconventional coming-of-age story.... As in Toni Morrison's Beloved or Chris Abani's Song for Night, the supernatural elements of White Is for Witching serve to remind the characters - and Oyeyemi's readers - of horrifying historical circumstances.... Oyeyemi clearly appreciates that some crimes (like slavery or genocide or, in this case, institutional racism) are so heinous that the conventions of realist fiction seem woefully inadequate to describe them. She makes us glad to suspend disbelief.
New York Times Book Review


Profoundly chilling…a slow-building neo-Gothic that will leave persevering readers breathless.
Boston Globe


Spooky and thought provoking.... The Poe-like elements of White Is for Witching are so spookily vivid, from foreboding descriptions of landscape ('The sun was setting into storm clouds; there was smoky brightness outside, as if the world was being inspected by candlelight') to the eeriness of an enchanted apple (half 'coma white' and a red that 'glowed like false fire'), that they tend steal the show. But Oyeyemi also has a convincing touch when dealing with ordinary reality. She's particularly sharp at portraying the inner life of a troubled adolescent and the alienation of immigrants…. As adept as she is at the Gothic, Oyeyemi also subverts its conventions. Here white is the colour of bewitchment and evil spells, not black. Yet the palpable aura of claustrophobic dread and menace urges the reader to conclude that the author casts the most powerful spell.
Toronto Star


[A] remarkable, shape-shifting tale.... The narrative oscillates between the mundane and the supernatural, and it is this skilful blend of the fantastic and the everyday that makes it resonate so chillingly. While ghosts may skulk inside the house, the horrors lurking outside are equally alarming.... Yet, for all this trickery, Oyeyemi's writing is vividly emotional.... In the end, this isn't a fantasy about ghosts and witches. It is really about memory and belonging, love and loss.
New Statesman (UK)


Superbly atmospheric…. [a] mesmeric exploration of alienation and loss…. This eloquent narrative delivers grandly on the promise of Oyeyemi's startling debut…. Oyeyemi's languid cadences are more burnished, her sinuous ideas more firmly embedded in the fabric of this disturbing and intricate novel. The dark tones of Poe in her haunting have also the elasticity of Haruki Murakami's surreal mental landscapes. White is for Witching has the subtle occlusions of her previous two works with a tenacious undertow, drawing the reader into its deeper currents.
Independent (UK)


Oyeyemi delivers her third passionate and unusual book, a neo-gothic tale revolving around Miranda and Eliot Silver, fraternal twins of Haitian descent raised in a British house haunted by generations of afflicted, displaced family members, including their mother. Miranda suffers from pica, an affliction that causes her to eat nonedible items, which is passed down to her via the specters from her childhood that now punctuate her nightmares. As the novel progresses, the increasingly violent nature of this bizarre, insatiable hunger reveals itself to be the ironclad grip of the dead over the living or of mother over daughter. The book is structured around multiple voices—including that of the house itself—that bleed into one another. Appealing from page one, the story, like the house, becomes extremely foreboding, as the house is "storing its collapse" and "can only be as good as" those who inhabit it. The house's protective, selfish voice carries a child's vision of loss: in the absence of a mother, feelings of anger, betrayal and bodily desire replace the sensation of connection. Unconventional, intoxicating and deeply disquieting.
Publishers Weekly


After Lily Silver is killed on assignment in Haiti, her family is left in her childhood home in Dover, England. While her widower, Luc, throws himself into the running of his bed-and-breakfast, their son, Eliot, stays away from home as much as he can, and their daughter, Miranda, begins to lose herself in her eating disorder. After Miranda returns from a psychiatric clinic, the Silver House begins to haunt her with visions of her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother, keeping her close while driving away foreign guests. The house also drives away Miranda's African friend from Cambridge, and Miranda herself disappears into the secret passages of the house. Verdict: Oyeyemi's third novel (after The Opposite House) is eerie and compelling, employing a nonlinear style that features wisps of family history and various unreliable narrators breaking into the text that suit a gothic, ghostly story. Readers who like paranormal tales and family secrets, told in an experimental style, will enjoy this novel. —Amy Ford, St. Mary's Cty. Lib., Lexington Park, MD
Library Journal


Oyeyemi's third mystical novel weaves a tale of four generations of women and the house in Dover, England, they've inhabited—a vengeful, Gothic edifice that has always rejected strangers.... Oyeyemi's style is as enigmatic as her plot.... In all, a challenging read laced with thought-provoking story lines that end, like Miranda's fate, mysteriously. —Deborah Donovan
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